This Was Television On November 21

1980: J.R.’s shooter is revealed

Dallas‘s third season ended with the moment that ensured its permanent place in the pop culture lexicon as viewers asked, “Who shot J.R.”? The assailant was revealed in the fourth episode of the fourth season, “Who Done It?” A record audience tuned in to learn that Kristin Shepard fired on the Ewing family patriarch; the episode garnered a 53.5 rating, the highest in TV history at that time (that record would be supplanted less than three years later by the finale of M*A*S*H). -A.D.

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[…] Dallas‘s third-season finale, “A House Divided,” kicked the hit soap’s penchant for high stakes, cutthroat family drama up with one of the most famous episodes in TV history. J.R. Ewing, the patriarch and oil baron who Larry Hagman helped make one of America’s favorite TV villains, was the victim of an unseen would-be assassin. That summer, “Who Shot J.R.?” became the question that dominated pop culture. The cliffhanger lingered for exactly eight months, until it was resolved in the fourth-season episode “Who Done It?” on November 21, 1980. -A.D. […]